
Taping shape: menswear designers saw their show invitations as a real sticking point for A/W 2018. At Prada, a flat-pack corrugated cardboard box came wrapped with a white sticker, stamped with the event’s address. It also alluded to the theme of the show’s set design, imagined as a storage space, stacked with crates and boxes. More naturalistic was Kiko Kostadinov’s invitation – a grey flyer with dried flowers attached to its front with masking and brown tape. The dried foliage also nodded to the women’s headpieces which featured in the show, designed by Katsuya Kamo. Photography: Aylin Bayhan

Grey area: Loewe and Santoni Edited by Marco Zanini showed a penchant for black and white photography. Loewe’s Jonathan Anderson enlisted Duane Michals to capture a magic-inspired menswear lookbook, with an image of hands swirling around a crystal ball also featuring as the brand’s show invitation. At Santoni Edited by Marco Zanini, the brand recruited art director Karl Kolbitz and photographer Ingar Krauss to capture a range of black and white portraits of Milanese people. Krauss also shot an image of a snuggly shearling coat piled onto a chair, which featured as the image on brand’s presentation invitation.

Sorbet shades: pastel hues were a hit at both the mens and women’s shows, with Berluti’s thick embossed invitation imagined in a particularly delectable shade of candy floss pink. At Missoni, a dainty pocket book with bright coloured pages, was bound with a cover in a gradient of pastel shades, while at Roksanda, the designer collaborated with the artist Caroline Denervaud on a fold out poster of softly formed shapes. At Akris, creative director Albert Kriemler took inspiration from early 20th-century Vienna, lining the back of his show space with Egon Schiele portraits. One also appeared on the brand’s show invitation, featuring a transparent pink paper fold out, printed with with a pencil and paint Schiele sketch.

Mirror mirror: Yohji Yamamoto has a penchant for practical show invitations, and for his A/W 2018 womenswear show he designed a disco-centric compact mirror with a shimmering glittery cover. As a solution for losing cosmetic items inside handbags, the mirror came complete with a long coated cord, which could be tied around the neck like a lanyard.

Cold spell: womenswear designers showed an icy inclination to their invitation design. At Issey Miyake, Yoshiyuki Miyamae collaborated with the octogenarian graphic designer and illustrator Tadanori Yokoo on a show ticket which unfolded to reveal two winter-inspired artworks. One side featured the profile of a wolf and a burning campfire against a snowy landscape, and the other a circling collage of white tigers. Meanwhile, at Nehera, the brand’s presentation flyer came complete with a fold out invitation featuring a model walking through a snowy landscape surrounded by tall reeds, lensed by Michal Pudelka.

Type hype: in Paris, designers had a soft spot for sans serif typography – with Comme des Garçons Homme Plus and Dior Homme printing simple black script onto foldable glossy white paper. Over at the womenswear shows, Junya Watanabe favoured a capitalised font, printed at an off-kilter angle on cream matt paper.